Graphics are visual presentations on some surface, such as a wall, canvas, computer screen, paper, or stone to brand, inform, illustrate, or entertain. Examples of graphics include photographs, drawings, line art, graphs, diagrams, typography, numbers, symbols, geometric designs, maps, engineering drawings, or other images. Graphics can combine text, illustration, and color. Graphic design can include deliberate selection, creation, or arrangement of typography alone, as in a brochure, flier, poster, web site, or book without any other element.
Computer graphics sometimes can refer to representation and manipulation of image data by a computer, various technologies that can be used to create and manipulate images, images that are produced, digital synthesizing and manipulating of visual content, and/or many other things. Computers and computer-generated images touch many aspects of daily life. Computer imagery is found on television, in newspapers, in weather reports, in medical investigation and surgical procedures, as well as many other areas. Many powerful tools have been developed to visualize data. Computer generated imagery can be categorized into several different types: 2D, 3D, and animated graphics. As technology has improved, 3D computer graphics have become more common, but 2D computer graphics are still widely used. Computer graphics has emerged as a sub-field of computer science which studies methods for digitally synthesizing and manipulating visual content. Over the past decade, other specialized fields have been developed (e.g., information visualization, scientific visualization, etc.) that are more concerned with the visualization of three dimensional phenomena (e.g., architectural, meteorological, medical, biological, etc.), where the emphasis is on realistic renderings of volumes, surfaces, illumination sources, and the like, sometimes with a dynamic (time) component.
Computer graphics typically include various visual textures. A texture can refer to a perceived surface quality of an image or an object displayed in an image and can be an element of two-dimensional and three-dimensional design. It can be distinguished by its perceived visual and physical properties. In computer graphics, a texture, such as a bitmap or a raster image, can refer to a detail or a surface texture, or color in a computer-generated graphic or 3D model. An ability to model such visual texture is important in any computer graphics modeling system. The advent of digital photography has made natural images an important source for textures. Numerous texture synthesis techniques have been developed to generate arbitrarily large textures to be mapped onto digital models.
Computer-aided design (CAD) systems have been extraordinarily successful in design, especially in architecture. Recently there has been considerable interest in 3D modeling systems for early phases in the design of structures. Sketching programs that allow users to sketch by hand or “rough out” three-dimensional definitions from simple strokes and gestures are widely used by architects. Yet even as computers are ubiquitous in the design of a physical environment or structures, the existing array of computational aids does not offer assistance in the conceptual design of physical structures relative to existing natural and manmade environments, which can be a central concern of architectural design.
Currently available approaches for representing the surrounding visual context include 3D models and panoramic images. Full 3D models of sites allow a designer to envision designs in multiple views and relative to the context. However, such models are rarely, if ever, used in practice because full-3D models, particularly of landscapes, are difficult to acquire, and the representation is too unwieldy to support conceptual design. Design sketching over photographic panoramas, either on paper or by computer, is often used due to the intuitive interface. However, these sketches cannot easily be reconciled into a 3D form, and testing the compatibility of locations in the site is challenging, if not impossible. Moreover, this approach is very inadequate when complex topographic variations are involved, and sketching on a photograph does not allow for occlusions or multiple views. At best, it can only support the juxtaposition approach, described above—and only for a single view.
A system to support designing relative to context needs to be able to incorporate constraints and features imposed by the existing setting, while allowing free creative experimentation. The key impediment to designing relative to context is the inability to present a complex setting in a form that is amenable to conceptual design. Thus, conventional techniques have not been able to succeed in site representation, design, and imagery.